Memory Lane
by EveningInHornersCorners
Summary: A collection of vignettes about Tony's childhood, in no specific order. Story Two: The weekends were always silent. And it seemed that they were just going to get a lot more silent.
1. Nothing to Do But Frown

_**A/N: These will probably be better understood after reading "Leave Yesterday Behind".**_

_**Thank you to Cruelest Sea for your kind review to my debut **__**Time Tunnel**__** piece, "Leave Yesterday Behind". Seeing that the most iconic writer in this fandom had reviewed **__**my**__** story really made my day. **_

Not many people turned out for Aunt Clara's funeral; the landlord, her three employees from the bridal shop, one her old schoolteachers, Tony, Maureen, Mrs. Matthews, the neighbor, and Uncle Clyde and Aunt Ginny, who'd flown in as soon as they could after hearing.

The ten of them had clustered near the center of the church, a shapeless black blob resembling a swarm of locusts that might attack at any point.

Tony glanced to his right at Maureen, feet barely touching the floor but sitting up, gloved hands folded in her lap, just as Mother and Aunt Clara had taught her. She was clad from head to foot in black, from her veil to her shoes, her face offering the only break in this pattern.

Last night—every night, really—since the accident had been torture, plain and simple. Staying with Mrs. Matthews certainly hadn't helped either of them. For the most part, she left him alone; perhaps she felt that, at nine, he was mature enough to deal with everything that had occurred without too much intervention.

But Maureen was another matter.

Though well-intentioned, it seemed like the older women spent every spare moment trying to make the five year-old laugh. Tony saw her forcing herself to do so out of sheer obligation, but it didn't take any expertise to see that her heart wasn't in it at all.

And at night, long after she had been tucked in and should have been asleep, she'd come tiptoeing into his room, crying and complaining of horrible dreams. He'd scoot over, making enough room for her, and she'd climb in.

The two of them would lie that way throughout the sleepless night, each providing comfort to the other until finally, as the first rays of light shone through the Venetian blinds, pure exhaustion overtook their young bodies and they were quietly lulled into the arms of Morpheus.

Tony of course had his own share of nightmares. The scene would flash before his eyes countless times over, each detail frighteningly and meticulously in place; the firm lecturing, their distressed but unheeded shouts of warning, the horrible, yet tardy screeching of the Suburban's brakes…

And the blood. Oh the blood! It was everywhere, seeming to blanket the pavement, her clothing, everything.

It all had happened too fast, much too fast; there was no last goodbye, no farewell hug or last proclamation of love as was always portrayed in the movies. No. One moment, there had be an alive, vibrant woman; the next, all that life had been thrust out, leaving behind nothing but a corpse stained with crimson to be speculated by law enforcement officers and paramedics.

There was never a single moment it didn't all sting too far beyond measure. But when the natural mourning Maureen was entitled to was constantly being quashed by an well-meaning but seemingly inept neighbor, it made it easier to put aside his own troubles and comfort her.

But this morning there wasn't a dry eye in the church. At least for the duration of the service, it seemed Mrs. Matthews wouldn't be goading his little sister to smile.

He'd been to too many funerals; Grandfather's when he was four, right after the divorce, then Mom's, Dad's, and now Aunt Clara's. Of course Maureen probably couldn't have remembered the others with any sort of clarity, but he did.

Dying was, of course, in the natural order of things. But why did the people he loved most have to go in such rapid succession? Mom had only been thirty-one, Dad thirty-five, and Aunt Clara just twenty-seven. They could have lived so much longer.

But impending war, lingering illness, and a freak accident had sucked the life out of them long before their time should have been up.

###

At the conclusion of the service Mrs. Matthews led the children out of the church and to her car, explaining gently that they shouldn't see the burial about to take place. Tony might have objected had the lump in his throat not rendered him mute. Instead, he just obediently followed and slid into the back seat next to a pensive Maureen.

The ride was a quiet one; it seemed that Mrs. Matthews was finally beginning to understand that sometimes silence really was golden. Upon arriving at the woman's home and being told to come downstairs if they became hungry, the two children retreated upstairs.

Upon approaching Tony's door, his little sister looked up shyly at him and asked, "May I come in?"

Her eyes were pleading, bottom lip quivering, but he needed no convincing.

"Of course."

She entered and sat down solemnly on the bed, as if waiting for something.

"Why?" she demanded shakily.

He took a place to her left. "Why what?"

"Why did she have to go?"

He sighed. "God needed her now."

"So did we."

"I know. But we have Uncle Clyde and Aunt Ginny. We'll go and live with them."

She looked at him, and with a hint of morbidity in her voice, asked, "Is God always so mean?"

Tony drew in a sharp breath. "Don't _ever_ say that God's mean, Maureen. He only created good; the evil comes from the Devil."

"Why did God let the Devil make evil?"

"Well… the Devil started out as an angel, but he rebelled and got thrown out. Then he decided to start up his own kingdom with his friends who also got kicked out. That's Hell. Where all the bad people go. But you see, if God had stopped the Devil from rebelling, he would have been interfering with his free will. God never does that."

Her face melted into a picture of fright. "Will I go to Hell?" she asked quietly, her voice quivering violently and brows furrowing.

"Oh Maureen." He enveloped her in a hug. "You don't need to worry about that now. If you try hard to be a good girl and are sorry for the things you've done wrong, you won't go to Hell."

"Promise?" she said into his shirt.

"Promise."


	2. Silently For Me

Tony had moved several times within his nine years; the adjustment had never been all that easy, no matter where he went.

And making the transition to Uncle Clyde and Aunt Ginny's was no exception.

In his early years, his mother had regaled him with vivid, glowing stories of his fabulous Aunt Virginia—Ginny, she was always called—and her husband, Clyde, who had greatly enriched the lives of the entire clan by his addition to the family.

But it seemed to him that those stories contained more fiction than fact.

To the credit of his aunt and uncle, they tried. Goodness knew if they did anything, they tried. Aunt Ginny made sure they were up for school each morning and sent them out the door to begin their trek with three kisses each, though she never was there to greet them as they came home.

Uncle Clyde, on the other hand, offered interesting dinner table conversation and help with homework every night; in fact, his vast knowledge of science was a great source of fascination for Tony and he constantly diverted the young boy with stories of the mishaps that occurred at the plant where he used to work before becoming a successful freelance writer.

But on the weekends, the house was an entirely different place. And it was what happened behind closed doors that was worrisome.

The children spent the majority of their weekend in the library, Tony reading and Maureen playing with her china animals or thumbing through the large anthology of fairy tales that Aunt Clara had owned. Because on Saturdays there were no tales of explosions or miraculous, improbable survivals of the severely injured. Nor did the four of them dine together. The seventh day of the week was one of fending for one's self. Sundays were only marginally less lonely, as the foursome faithfully attended eight o'clock Mass every week. But upon coming home, it just became another silent Saturday.

And on both of these days it seemed that neither Aunt Ginny nor Uncle Clyde were really present at all.

It certainly wasn't that they weren't; quite to the contrary, they were in the house the entire day on Saturday and all but that hour at church on Sunday. On the rare occasion that one of the children would pass by the bedroom door of their aunt and uncle, the room the couple never seemed to leave on weekends, Aunt Ginny's heavy sobs and Uncle Clyde's sonorous, dulcet tones trying in vain to comfort her could be heard with painful clarity. Once Tony had peeked through the keyhole and seen his aunt, still huddled under the covers, crying her eyes out and simply wailing "Clara! Clara!"

Tony knew of only two times Aunt Ginny had exited that bedroom, and both had ended with Uncle Clyde dragging her back as she wept incessantly and he yelled at her, words that even with his vocabulary the young boy couldn't understand.

And now, on what should have been a Saturday of celebration—Maureen's sixth birthday, October 9, 1943—Tony could sense that there was an unease of greater magnitude than ever before. The house was much, much too silent. And when he'd gotten up early that morning, wanting a drink of water, walking to the kitchen he'd seen Uncle Clyde and Aunt Ginny's bedroom door open, something that never happened.

Neither of them was there.

But at the time he hadn't thought too much of it at all. Bleary-eyed, he'd gotten his water and then returned to bed, where he dreamt of a glowing black and white spiral in which thousands of explosions seemed to occur, leaving behind the eeriest of blue smoke.

###

Though to Tony there was a notable absence in the household the next day, he and Uncle Clyde tried to make things as nice as possible for Maureen; the three of them had lunch together, and Uncle Clyde presented her with a china dove to add to her collection. Shrieking with delight, the little girl had sprinted out of the room, wanting to "introduce" Paloma, as she called the bird, to the rest of her animals.

"She's such a sweet one." Uncle Clyde commented off-handedly, looking on.

Tony looked up at his uncle curiously, hating to ruin his state of what seemed to be almost bliss but feeling as though he desperately needed to know the answer to his question.

"Uncle Clyde, where's Aunt Ginny?"

"Why do you ask?"

"We never see her on Saturdays."

The older man sighed."Tony, do you understand the concept of suicide?" The boy nodded solemnly.

"Do you remember those two times I yelled at your aunt?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, both those times she tried to drown herself in the bathtub. But this morning—early this morning—she took a more direct approach. I caught her in the kitchen, stabbing herself with a knife." He cleared his throat. "After the second time she tried to kill herself, I threatened to put her in a mental institution if she did it again. And she did do it again, so I kept my word. You see Tony, she was so very upset over your Aunt Clara dying. They were close. Very close. So when she went… your Aunt Ginny—your _real _Aunt Ginny—went with her. I think that car struck her just as much as it did Clara."

The older man stood up and heading for the hall closet, said, "I'm going out. I'll be back tonight."

But he wasn't back by that night, or the next or the next. They didn't see him again for a week.


End file.
